Movies
I really appreciate just how silly this movie is willing to get. For example, the main villain looks like Darth Maul; he lives inside an alternate-dimension haunted mansion in a room full of puppets and gritty goth pictures, like some Hot Topic edgelord—the movie makes no attempt to rationalize or apologize for any of this, and in fact, it just kind of revels in it. There's a real hucksterish, go-for-broke quality about this movie that makes it feel like you're in an old-school roadside attraction, and while you know all the tricks, it's so earnest and eager and executed with such craft that it's a good time nonetheless. Simultaneously extremely patient and homespun while also being kind of maximalist in its own way. Grade: B
Almost every one of my elderly relatives who has died (as well as my still-living grandfather right now) has basically had the same journey as Emmanuelle Riva's character here—an agonizing succession of strokes and dementia that turns them into miserable shells of themselves for the last several years of their lives. I usually welcome movies that make me revel in horrible family memories, but this was honestly a slog and I was bored for long sections, though I think that's probably exactly right: there's nothing engaging or fun or even necessarily profound about the kind of pain depicted here, the pain of feeling yourself slowly become encased inside an empty facsimile of yourself and the pain of watching from the outside that happen to someone you love. If anything, this movie isn't miserable enough, though I'd certainly forgive anyone (even known provocateur of human wretchedness, writer/director Michael Haneke) who didn't want to put onscreen the shouting and screaming and the irrevocable relational rifts among the living family. I'm leaning positively on this, though, because the performances are tremendous, and I don't think I've ever seen such an unsentimental depiction of love. Grade: B
An unusually frank (and hence still unreleased) look at the way that the Disney machine just crushes and squeezes out any sense of authorship or individual vision. I hate the "Disney knows best" mentality that has only gotten worse in the subsequent decades since the release of The Emperor's New Groove, but the weird tension of this documentary is that almost every mandate thrown down by some corporate suit or committee undeniably makes the animated movie in question better; The Emperor's New Groove is the second-to-last great movie produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios thus far (2011's Winnie the Pooh, I haven't forgotten you!), energetic and idiosyncratic and fun in ways that are unlike any other Disney movie out there, and the harsh reality that this documentary shows is that Kingdom of the Sun would have been far inferior. I mean, those character models? Owen Wilson as Pacha? A sincere Prince-and-the-Pauper riff? Music exclusively by Sting??? Disney execs can sit on a tack, but I gotta hand it to them for getting this one right. Sting is actually the best part of this movie. He's got this great arc from being on top of the world being asked to write songs for this prestigious new Disney animated epic to moping around Malibu because hardly any of his compositions worked for the direction the film ended up going. It's a great feeling to see Sting put in his place, and to boot, he ends up embodying the film's central tension between personal integrity and corporate synergy. The most compelling part of the documentary is actually the very end when there is a montage of the movie characters being turned into gross little Happy Meal toys, followed by (in a rich juxtaposition) a bunch of the people involved in the film saying how amazing it is to work on something so majestic as a Disney project. The final line of the movie is Sting, cowed into submission by the Mouse House, telling us that "the process does work." It's weird to watch a movie where everyone is right, at least this once. Grade: B+
Almost, almost disposable kitsch—I've seen/read so many of these "WHOA, I'm suddenly back in time and can relive my past/predict the then-future!" stories that parts of this basically fade into nothingness because of how familiar they are. But there are other parts of this movie that are disquietingly raw, and it kind of snaps the whole thing back into being. Parts like that scene near the end of the movie where Nicolas Cage's character gives that speech to Cathleen Turner's character—it's like the movie just opens a vein and really digs into just how psychologically tumultuous it would be to have the chance to live your life differently, the possibility to lose everything and everyone you know from the future but to gain a whole new world of possibilities. I've seen people dismiss the ending of this movie as saccharine, but I dunno, I think those earlier intense moments do the work to give weight to the decision made at the ending. Grade: B
It's weird finally seeing this after having been familiar with Philip Glass's score for years (surely among the maybe 5 greatest film scores ever?). I basically already knew this movie by reputation and got pretty much what was advertised, so I can't say I'm really blown away or surprised or anything (though I'll admit that I was not expecting the video game montage). But this was great. Really great. The 30-ish minutes in the middle of the film where it's just urban life in time lapse are probably among the greatest sustained stretches of visual-musical synthesis in film history. The rest of the movie doesn't have quite that level of impact, which I guess is the point—the intoxication of the heights of modern industrialization chased by the bitter comedown of its ramifications. Grade: A
The super-depressing tale of an inspiring collectivist movement being crushed by the cops and the capitalists (who, no joke, are just old white dudes chomping enormous cigars the whole movie). I know this is Soviet propaganda and, as such, not meant to be strictly realistic, but golly if the cops in this movie don't act exactly like the cops at the protests this year. Grade: B+
Music
Surprise Fleet Foxes album! Hurray! My proclivities as a Fleet Foxes fan are definitely lean toward the group's more adventurous, discursive instincts—think "The Shrine/An Argument" off Helplessness Blues or basically the entirety of Crack-Up—so I have to admit that it's a little disappointing for me that Shore is probably their most straightforward record yet (especially after Crack-Up and the accompanying tour had me expecting Fleet Foxes to dive even further into the prog-folk territory explored there). But it's hard to complain too much when the music is still this good. The rustic-twee sensibilities of Robin Pecknold's early work have basically disappeared, resulting in probably the least-pretentious set of songs Fleet Foxes has yet produced; in some respects, it resembles a modern pop album in the sense that you have a singular artist, Pecknold, as the central persona orbited by a host of collaborators and session musicians who jump in for a track or two (Kevin Morby makes an appearance, as well as Grizzly Bear—and to further the pop analogy, there are even a few samples: there's a Brian Wilson sample, for example). As such, each song feels like a self-contained project, and even if it's not my favorite flavor, there's a real pleasure here in hearing Fleet Foxes' signature instrumental ornateness bent toward such melodic directness and precise songcraft: "Sunblind" and "Young Man's Game" in particular stand out, radiant sonic and songwriting gems. And as always, Pecknold's lyrics remain a comfort, their mix of pastoral wonder and world-weariness always a highlight, none more so than on the closing title track: "I remember hoping I'd remember nothing / now I only hope I'm holding onto something / now the quarter moon is out," Pecknold sings there, and those words just cradle me. So there's a ton to like here; I just wish the album as a unit were more exploratory, to make these crystalline moments of clarity all the clearer. But I'm sure others will like the whole package even more than I did. I may even eventually learn to like the whole package more than I already do. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up nerd for wanting 10-minute prog excursions on a record as lovely as Shore is. Grade: B
